Texas A&M president riding a wave of approval

Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin lines up with members of the Corps of Cadets during Midnight Yell practice Nov. 17 at Kyle Field. Bowen religiously attends the pep rally before every home game.

Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin lines up with members of the Corps of Cadets during Midnight Yell practice Nov. 17 at Kyle Field. Bowen religiously attends the pep rally before every home game.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Staff

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Loftin has become known for his bow tie. Students often request a picture with him and affectionately call him "Dr. Bow Tie," though not to his face.

Loftin has become known for his bow tie. Students often request a picture with him and affectionately call him "Dr. Bow Tie," though not to his face.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Staff

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Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin meets with the Texas A&M University Press board at the Memorial Student Center recently. Whether with students or the board of regents, creating strong personal relationships is his strength, friends say.

For Loftin, no job is too small, including cleaning up horse manure in front of the review stand after the Corps of Cadets entered Kyle Field prior to a football game.

For Loftin, no job is too small, including cleaning up horse manure in front of the review stand after the Corps of Cadets entered Kyle Field prior to a football game.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Staff

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As night falls on the College Station campus, Loftin drives away from Rudder Tower in a golf cart. The physicist also is known for working hard at his job.

As night falls on the College Station campus, Loftin drives away from Rudder Tower in a golf cart. The physicist also is known for working hard at his job.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Staff

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Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin goes over his notes before presenting remarks during the A&M Women's Former Student Awards Reception at the Rudder Tower Exhibit Hall on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012, in College Station.

General Hal M. Hornburg (USAF, Ret), left, whispers in the ear of Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin during a meeting of the Corps Board of Visitors at the Sanders Corps Center on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012, in College Station.

General Hal M. Hornburg (USAF, Ret), left, whispers in the ear of Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin during a meeting of the Corps Board of Visitors at the Sanders Corps Center on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012, in

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin presents remarks during the A&M Women's Former Student Awards Reception at the Rudder Tower Exhibit Hall on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012, in College Station.

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin presents remarks during the A&M Women's Former Student Awards Reception at the Rudder Tower Exhibit Hall on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012, in College Station.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Houston Chronicle

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Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin lines up with the football team for the singing of the Aggie War Hymn after their victory over Sam Houston State on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin lines up with the football team for the singing of the Aggie War Hymn after their victory over Sam Houston State on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Houston Chronicle

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Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin shakes hand with fans along the sidelines at Kyle Field during the Aggies football game against Sam Houston State on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin shakes hand with fans along the sidelines at Kyle Field during the Aggies football game against Sam Houston State on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Houston Chronicle

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Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin is silhouetted against an SEC logo projected on the walls at the President's Pre-Game Reception at the Memorial Student Center before the Aggies faced Sam Houston State in a football game on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin is silhouetted against an SEC logo projected on the walls at the President's Pre-Game Reception at the Memorial Student Center before the Aggies faced Sam Houston State

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin poses for photos in the crowd during Midnight Yell Practice at Kyle Field on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin poses for photos in the crowd during Midnight Yell Practice at Kyle Field on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Houston Chronicle

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Loftin and Gen. Joe E. Ramirez Jr., commandant of the Corps of Cadets, bottom second from left, show their approval from the review stand as the corps arrive before the game against Sam Houston State.

Loftin and Gen. Joe E. Ramirez Jr., commandant of the Corps of Cadets, bottom second from left, show their approval from the review stand as the corps arrive before the game against Sam Houston State.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Staff

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Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin unties his trademark bow tie after Midnight Yell Practice at Kyle Field on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin unties his trademark bow tie after Midnight Yell Practice at Kyle Field on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Houston Chronicle

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Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin walks to the locker room with defensive back Toney Hurd after the Aggies' victory over Sam Houston State on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin walks to the locker room with defensive back Toney Hurd after the Aggies' victory over Sam Houston State on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, in College Station.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Houston Chronicle

Texas A&M president riding a wave of approval

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COLLEGE STATION - One could reasonably expect that the president of a top research university with 50,000 students and an annual budget of more than $1.2 billion would be able to work a room.

But here, on a recent, gloriously sun-washed Saturday afternoon, was Texas A&M University President R. Bowen Loftin, resplendent in an Aggie-maroon blazer and matching signature bow tie, working an entire football stadium filled with 80,000 fans as if it were the ballroom of a small hotel.

For more than four hours at Kyle Field, as "Johnny Football" Manziel and his Aggies team toyed with Sam Houston State, Loftin roamed the stadium to schmooze with regents, pose for countless smartphone photos with students, chuck babies under the chin, slap the backs of well-heeled alumni in their expansive suites, huddle for quick side-conferences about this important matter or that, and reach into his blazer pocket for his card, telling youngsters thinking about applying to the college to call him.

It was a festive, euphoric room. Three-and-a-half years after Loftin was brought in to the troubled university, he was riding a wave of popularity and savoring his good fortune that his biggest gamble so far - moving the Aggies football program to the vaunted Southeastern Conference - had paid off.

More Information

A&amp;M President R. Bowen Loftin

Born: June 29, 1949, in Hearne

Texas A&amp;M: Former vice president and chief executive officer, and professor of maritime systems engineering at A&amp;M at Galveston

Old Dominion University: Former executive director of the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center at the Norfolk, Va., institution

University of Houston: Former chairman of the Department of Computer Science, and director of the NASA Virtual Environments Research Institute at UH

NASA: Former senior resident research associate with the Office of Information Technology at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center

A week before, the Aggies had beaten top-ranked Alabama in Tuscaloosa on their way to an improbable 10-2 record in their first season in the elite league. Manziel was favored to become the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy, which he did, and only the second Aggie to do so. The university was enjoying the national television exposure no amount of money could buy. Loftin's many constituents - the students, the regents, the chancellor, the alumni, the faculty, all of Aggieland - were happy.

They were decidedly not so in June 2009 when Loftin was called up from relative obscurity as head of A&M's Galveston campus to replace, on an interim basis, Elsa Murano, who was forced to resign after 17 months in the job and a contentious relationship with the chancellor.

Loftin's faculty was up in arms at the circumstances of Murano's abrupt departure, the students were unsettled, as were the alumni and everyone else - and there are a lot of them - with a deep affection for A&M. A bespectacled physicist with a pioneering interest in artificial intelligence and an innate understanding of the complex nature of human relationships, Loftin set about calming the campus.

Nearly three years after his confirmation as the 24th president of Texas A&M University in February 2010, he appears to have succeeded. Loftin knows that beneath the placid surface lie unresolved dangers, that he could at any moment "run afoul" of his bosses on the Board of Regents, that the future could be anything but smooth sailing.

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No job too small

But on this afternoon, with the cries of "Howdy, Dr. Loftin" ringing in his ears and the score on the board steadily ticking higher, and his right hand aching from a thousand shakes, all was right in Aggieland.

Part of the spectacle of an Aggies game at home is the pregame parade around the field by the mounted cavalry of the university's famed Corps of Cadets. By nature, horses leave a mess in their wake, and Loftin has made it a habit to run onto the field after they have passed and help the students scoop it up.

Some members of his inner circle have tried to discourage him, despite the fact that he is loudly applauded by the crowd. It is not, they tell him, a job befitting the president.

"This IS the job of the president," is his response.

It's not a flip retort. It is, rather, a core element of Loftin's leadership style, a clue to his popularity. No job is too small, no detail too insignificant, no person too unimportant for his attention. Previous presidents - Robert Gates, for instance - have been successful, according to a senior faculty member, because they were widely respected; Loftin is successful because he is widely liked and works hard at it.

"The one thing this job needs, I think, is somebody who is not afraid to get out of their skin," he said. "You can't take yourself too seriously, you cannot be too inner directed. You've got to be able to relate to a huge variety of people - to an 18-year-old freshman, to their irate parents, to the faculty member who's mad about something, to the alumnus who has some kind of particular issue they want you to take care of."

Many pressures

In many respects, the job of president of any university today is different from what it used to be. Higher education is in the cross hairs - from legislatures looking to slash budgets, from reformers who feel campuses are too bloated with professors doing too much research and not enough teaching, from parents who don't feel they are getting the bang for the big bucks they are shelling out.

"It's a national trend," said Karan Watson, A&M's provost who was appointed by Loftin early in his tenure. "There is a very different political environment that Bowen is working in. It's higher education's turn to be questioned about whether we are really still working for the public good. Bowen is trying to make sure that we understand that the mantra 'We are working for the public good. Trust us,' is no longer sufficient. We have to demonstrate it."

Other faculty leaders credit Loftin with restoring a sense of calm on the campus, but worry that outside pressures that ultimately led to Murano's fall have not disappeared.

Murano, the first Hispanic American and the first woman to serve as president of the university, clashed with then-chancellor Mike McKinney, a medical doctor and associate of Gov. Rick Perry, over several issues, including her authority to make key financial decisions and the role of research on the campus. She also took exception to a plan floated by McKinney that he serve as both president of the College Station campus and as chancellor of the system.

McKinney is no longer chancellor, and Loftin has a good working relationship with his successor, John Sharp, but there is still concern that the core problems remain.

Building relationships

"The pressure is still there," said Reza Langari, a professor of mechanical engineering and chairman of the faculty's Council of Principal Investigators. "President Loftin has managed to keep things relatively calm. He has good rapport with the Board of Regents. Faculty on the other hand feel there is more to be done, that the president needs to be more aggressive, but they also realize there is a limit on what the president is able to do and that if they press too much it would be unproductive."

Loftin made it a priority, even as interim president, to reach out to the faculty and address their concerns, and to begin establishing a relationship with the board. In both regards, he concentrates on what friends and associates say is his strength: creating strong personal relationships with individuals.

"I'm very engaged with the board members," Loftin said. "Over time, you get to know them and you understand where they're coming from. They're all different, but they all share a sincere love for Texas A&M. We don't always agree, and that's OK.

"If I disagree with them, I let them know and we work it out."

For the moment, at least, that seems to be the case, said Austin dentist Richard Box, chairman of the Board of Regents.

"I think Dr. Loftin is doing an excellent job not only with the university, but with the alumni groups and helping us with this effort to establish a national brand for the university," Box said. "We have a good working relationship and a very collegial manner. Things are on a good track now."

Strong Aggie ties

Loftin, 63, was born in Hearne and raised in Navasota, about 20 miles south of College Station, but it wasn't ordained that he would attend Texas A&M.

His father was a drag line operator for the Texas Department of Transportation and his mother worked part time as a cashier at J.C. Penney and a grocery store. Money was tight; the family was "lower middle class, at best," Loftin said.

"My dad was uneducated," he said. "But he was smart. He could read and write and do arithmetic, but that was about it. What he really was strong at was relationships. He was a guy that got along with everybody. I grew up immersed in what I call a people person's world."

Loftin applied to three universities - A&M, Rice University and the University of Texas - and chose A&M because he was offered a scholarship. He sees himself as a member of the Class of '71, but he graduated in 1970 with highest honors, a year earlier than his class, with a degree in physics.

With the encouragement of his professor, Tom Adair, who is still a member of the faculty at A&M and who remembers his former student (now president) fondly, he enrolled at Rice and earned a master's degree and a doctorate.

At Rice, he achieved at least two significant milestones: He met his wife Karin, a student at the University of Texas' School of Biomedical Sciences, and he helped found Rice's graduate student pub Valhalla, where he boasted, said Karin Loftin, that it became the largest distributors in the state of Shiner Bock beer.

Loftin forged a distinguished academic career in the pursuit of artificial intelligence before it was cool. He had a 23-year stint at the University of Houston, where he was chairman of the Department of Computer Science and director of the NASA Virtual Environments Research Institute.

He then joined Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., as professor of electrical and computer engineering and professor of computer science. He also was the director of simulation programs and executive director of the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center. Immediately prior to becoming A&M's president, he was vice president and chief executive officer of Texas A&M at Galveston.

That brief description does little justice to the scope of Loftin's work, but he said he has essentially spent his career trying to simulate artificially what he loves doing most: teaching.

"I was trying to see how I can capture what I know to do as a teacher of physics," he said. "I began building models of student learning and started developing tutoring systems, which at the time was in its infancy. It all derived from one specific issue, which was my desire to capture what human teachers do very well and encode that in software."

Loftin and his wife just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. An associate safety officer at A&M's Office of Research Compliance and Biosafety, Karin Loftin said she is somewhat insulated against the rigors of being the president's wife by having her own career.

They have a house on Lake Conroe where they retreat on occasion and have two children - a son, who is a "rocket scientist" with Raytheon Co. in Tucson, Ariz, and a daughter in Wasilla, Alaska, who makes a home for her husband and the Loftins' three grandchildren.

'Dr. Bow Tie'

Four minutes before the final whistle, Loftin heads down to the field and the Aggie's bench where he mingles with the players and coaches, shaking hands and patting them on the back, congratulating them. He commiserates with the seniors on the team who will play their last game on Kyle Field when they play Missouri in the season's finale.

At the final whistle he heads onto the field, posing for photos, and joining the team in the traditional singing of the Aggie War Hymn on the sideline. Less than 24 hours earlier, he had been on the same sideline, in the cold, in the middle of the night with thousands of students for Midnight Yell - something he does religiously before every home game.

To the students, Loftin is a rock star. He's Dr. Bow Tie, although they're too polite to call him that to his face. He can't walk across campus without someone yelling "Howdy, Dr. Loftin. Can I get a picture?" He invariably stops and poses with the obligatory thumbs up Aggie Gig 'Em sign.

Loftin long ago maxed out the number of friends he's permitted on Facebook (5,000) and not even a personal request to the social networking empire could change the rules. So he now uses Twitter, where he has 12,500 followers, to link to Facebook status updates.

With the stands emptying, Loftin follows the team into the dressing room, his hand on the back of a player who towers over him. There's a prayer, and a pep talk from the coach and then, more than 12 hours after his day began, Loftin leaves the stadium.

His house, and an opportunity to sit down for practically the first time that day, is no more than 100 yards away, across an open field filled with festive, tailgating students.